Sepsis, a spectrum of severe immune disorders triggered by systemic infections, is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. In the U.S. alone, 751,000 sepsis cases occur annually, leading to 210,000 mortalities and an economic burden of $24 B. The primary causes of sepsis are usually symptomatic bacteremia or fungemia, a diagnosis that can only be determined by laboratory testing. Detection of the infecting pathogen is essential to identifying patients and initiating the proper antimicrobial therapy to avert or lessen a sepsis reaction. Traditionally, the first step in this process is a time-intensive step of culturing the unknown pathogen from a patient specimen for a period of 1-5 days. The culturing step results in a delay of effective treatment just at the earliest time of infection, which is a crucial therapeutic window when therapy has the maximum benefit. Each single hour delay in proper treatment increases the probability of mortality by 7.6%.